Mark:

I would spend all the money on DETAIL.

Detail is not really much more costly than no detail ... it's simply a matter of someone putting in more time and thought on a particular feature, and I've always been willing to put in that time.

I believe that the routing of the holes is the most important thing we do, because if you get the routing right it saves tons of money moving things around.  After that, the contouring of greens has the most effect on play ... but since you have to build greens anyway, putting interesting "rolls in greens" really doesn't cost anything more.

If you do it right, you won't need very many bunkers to accent the play.  But, on sandy sites, adding bunkers is not very expensive, either.

From a practical standpoint, the best thing you can do is to keep the cost of the irrigation system down.  That means not tearing up the native vegetation in the roughs, leaving native vegetation between the tees and the start of the fairway, and building a shorter course, whether it's par 70 or even par 68.

Adrian and Tom,

Well, so much for that thought experiment.

If I am reading both of you correctly, am I to infer that the only significant design constraint today is the architect's time and attention to the design?

That if I were building a course I should double your fee (meaning: get you to spend twice as much time on my course) and cut the construction budget in half? That, uh, sounds a little self serving! ;^)

So let me ask a different question. Can certain types of constraints (for example, construction budget) lead to better design, insofar as they force the designer to think harder?

If so, what are these constraints, and do they reveal certain design "rules of thumb" that could be "imposed" on the architect to force him to think through things like the routing? In other words, instead of paying the architect double, why not "sweat him," the way a hot, dry summer strains a grapevine, but leads often to the great vintages.

Happy new year,
Mark

Mark,
Very interesting topic.

A paradox in your proposal is that the fee some architects charge is based on a percentage of the overall construction cost. In the outside world I know how much contractors love cost plus arrangements. In GCA, it never made much sense to me (but I'm open to enlightenment ).

Tom - what kind of "detail" would you add for extra cost? To some, an extra cost detail might be a stone bridge rather than some wooden planks or a stone wall edging a tee box rather than a rr tie. I don't think that's what you had in mind and certainly keeping those kind of improvements out of the design keep the cost down. But I have a feeling that clubs expect an architect to include a lot of that kind of detail.

Mark- Tom and I build different courses so you are likely to get differentish answers here. Course I build tend aimed at regular play clubs where we target a playing audience of 40,000 per year and look to be a good value course with affordable fees (green fee say $50 ) with a course standard suitable for regional amateur events. The courses have to stack up financially and operate as a business.
If I am designing to any budget there are certain known costs like the 18+ green constructions, say 7200sq metres of teeing area. I dont think these aspects are going to cost a whole lot more on a big budget course and I feel strongly this is an area where you must not trim on the lower end ones. There are some areas where you hve a big range of price possibles.
Irrigation in the UK can be from £120,000 - £1,000,000
Fairway construction could be from zero to £?,000,000 on a low budget course, with a good routing and perhaps some acceptance of using the land features rather than it has to be 7200 yards par 72, two loops with a strong finish, par 3s spaced every 4 holes, same with the 5s..ie design around what is actually there, there are some big savings.
One thing I always try and do with a routing is to write the contour height of the 1st tee on a piece of paper, the contour height at 250 yds from the tee, the contour height of the green and so on for each hole, with the relationship between the previous green and the next tee being important; reason people in the UK mainly walk, it also means cheaper golf.
More fees- more time; I personally tend to work locally so its easy to pop in for an hour or so, however I often dont get involved in the finishing off of the bunkers and often they get finished not quite as I would have liked, they may be in the right location but it would be nice if I had more say in the finish of them, it would mean a lot of visits, costs would go up. More time from an architect can sometimes not be cost effecive, I like to be on site with 6 machines working, but some clients dont want to work that way.
Re your last Q, I try at all times not to waste any money and try and discuss the financial aspects of everthing we are doing/ changing. If a client wanted to change something very drastic I would try and argue my point the best I could, but as honestly as I could. I could not design something that was crap and I think most others would work in the same way. I actually find it quite hard to design expensive features anyway and to spend thousands of pounds or dollars just to make a hole 50 yards longer or so to make it 450 I just find wasteful.

Tom Doak,

Were you able to use the native soil (sand) for greens construction at Ballyneal or did you have to import a special greens mix?  How many rows wide did you go with the irrigation heads on the par 4s and 5s?  Didn't you use HDPE pipe there?  Was that more expensive than PVC?

Gary

The big costs are high spec constructions, you can design very expensive features of course, but 3 days with a D6 just chopping away can really make some interesting features cost is maybe £700. Some nice shaping or no shaping might only add a few hundred pounds to a green complex. r bunkers.

Adrian,

Three days with a D6 surely costs more than just 700 pounds? If not then I would like to talk to your contractor...

 

Mark:

I am surprised we haven't heard from Jeff Brauer or Mike Young on this one yet.

Naturally, there are economies of scale and economies of design, originating from smart, wise decision making and of course from lots of experience in the field.  For the most part these to go hand in hand hopefully first in the office and then most importantly later in the field.  This is to say that you really can't afford to have someone experimenting on your nickel and they need to have a solid thought process and likely the end result in mind when going ahead with an idea and committing to the details, or else they waste money.  Having said this, and to comment on your 'details' issue, these can't be overlooked in that they truly create the distinct quality of the course and when done with sufficient attention and sound planning ahead of time add considerably to the BEST design possible and often, and I agree with Tom, with minimal or no extra cost.

"But my point really was that there are a lot of costs in golf course construction that aren't optional."

Tom D. makes a good fundamental point here...within each feature there is room to make them better (details) and there is room to create them faster and achieve what you want sooner, but this comes with considerable experience.  How to move soil with different techniques based on the soil type, the haul distance, the weather conditions that WILL change, which equipment to use, the speed of production and the damage they cause, etc... at what cost to the final product...all come into play in building the 'affordable' course.  This brings us back to the novice one-timer with no experience that yes, they can/could do a great job with the design, but during the execution many things can go wrong and go wrong fast.  Who is willing to pay for this?

"if a client cut the construction budget by 21 percent and handed that money over to you, contingent upon your spending 21 percent more time on the project, would that lead to a better, same, or worse design"

It is impossible to determine if this could actually be done, (21% savings) though I know of plenty of contractors who would tell you it could be with ease    Inherently, I believe it would lead to a better final product, though for me and many architects I know, they do the best they can all the time with a carrot hanging in front of them (not that your comment was intended this way )  21% is substantial and going back to the fundamental features..it is difficult to simply cut that much out without having some fluffy features to begin with.  If you are bare bones going in, where do you trim from?

Conclusion, if you want to proceed this way, you need to have someone with the ability to work well in the field, have solid project management skills to work with all the trades on site and have a very good understand of them ALL to know when to say no, how to negotiate and have workable solutions to achieve the design intended without losing the budget.

For Gary:

Yes, we used native sand for the greens mix and tees at Ballyneal, and for the bunkers as well.

The fairways are everywhere from two heads to five heads across in places.  We were trying not to be wasteful of turf, but we didn't want people to get tired of hitting out of the yucca, either.

And the decision was made to go with HDPE pipe because we agreed with the client that it might be cheaper, in the long run.  The great benefit of it was that we could install all the main lines as well as the laterals by "pulling in" the pipe, as opposed to trenching through the sand, which is a pain because the trenches like to cave in.

Jeff:

We pushed off the top sand, screened it for rocks right next to the green site, shaped a well, and put the mix back in it.

There were 4 or 5 green sites on the front nine where the soil in situ wasn't suitable for greens mix, so we brought mix to those which was screened from a borrow area.

If it wasn't for the stones in the soil we would have just shaped them in place; they were just big enough that my construction superintendent, Tom Mead, insisted on the screening.  I think screening all the materials cost $25,000, and of course there was extra shaping cost that way, too ... but it was still a lot less than buying greens mix.

Jeff:

A lot of northern Michigan is sand ... over by Gaylord, too.  It's relatively inexpensive to build courses here, which is a good thing since the season is so short.  That contributed to the boom in construction a few years back.

Craig:

The greens are Champion bermuda which is grown from sprigs [CORRECTED].  Bermuda is very aggressive and establishes very quickly.  Three months of grow-in was a bit fast, but the club is not very busy so the traffic at the outset didn't harm it much.

We built the greens extremely quickly because we shaped them out of the native soils and then rotera'd about 2-3 inches of new sand into the mix and floated them out.  Not as complicated as USGA greens construction, so it went a lot faster ... I think Jim Urbina shaped out and floated 17 greens in 36 days.

Jeff:

Maybe with about 15-20 years more experience you'll be that quick and that good.